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Amazon Echo - Expensive light switch?

ColinD

By ColinD
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Macdemon Experienced

Macdemon

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Amazon's Echo is a nice concept, but WHY would I want one???

 

I have Siri on my iPhone which is MUCH older and MUCH more well established and integrated into modern tech.

 

I have Philips Hue bulbs in the house and now a Nest thermostat, and now with 1080p CCTV system installed, I'm VERY well 'connected'.  :yes:

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JohnMcL7
JohnMcL7

I was certainly tempted by the Echo just to have something like Star Trek but the more I thought about it, the more I realised I prefer just using my phone for that sort of thing as I don't use Google

Aspman
Aspman

I'd be concerned that I'd yell at someone on TV to go "**** themselves with a chair leg" and a bottle of suspicious lubricant would arrive in the post the next day.

ColinD
ColinD

I'd read those and the contra it 'waits for wake word'... if the nsa want to listen to my madness then please let them. I didn't order one. I figured a couple more particles would suffice for this sea

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@Lee Grand Master

@Lee

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Amazon's Echo is a nice concept, but WHY would I want one???

 

I have Siri on my iPhone which is MUCH older and MUCH more well established and integrated into modern tech.

 

I have Philips Hue bulbs in the house and now a Nest thermostat, and now with 1080p CCTV system installed, I'm VERY well 'connected'.   :yes:

The more internet of things the higher the chance those devices are riddled with botnet software.

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skomaz Mentor

skomaz

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Amazon's Echo is a nice concept, but WHY would I want one???

 

 

 

A very valid point - I have legs and arms and can move about and twiddle things like knobs and buttons myself...

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Aspman Veteran

Aspman

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The more internet of things the higher the chance those devices are riddled with botnet software.

 

Unless you're a bot herder, then things are going great.

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ColinD Grand Master

ColinD

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The IOT really is a pandora's box. It's real use cases are excellent. The paths for abuse are scary. Mostly as a lot of them break ask don't tell rules. i.e. a device should ask for "stuff", not be told. Because to be told holes need to be punched into home networks... Then man in the middle on compromised routers...yes it's a real mess. Although actually, humans are the problem, the greed of fraud.

 

 

 

https://youtu.be/qAw4wRmVNqE

 

Just got to get me some lego :)

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PetrolDave Experienced

PetrolDave

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Until I retired I was developing a medical IoT gadget, and found it almost impossible to get "the management" to understand that without proper security built-in our device could be targeted for bot-nets etc. - and with it being a medical device that makes it doubly scary.

 

Most embedded developers come from a background where their devices are isolated and have little or no comprehension of the security measures required when attaching anything to the internet. Now that's REALLY scary...

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Gyp Experienced

Gyp

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Amazon have just sent me a survey about my experience with the Echo.

 

As I've spent most of the last week trying to get the thing to connect to the broadband, my response hasn't been entirely positive.

 

But I've managed it tonight, so I can now turn the lights on and off without unscrewing the bulbs.

 

Yay!

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Wet Kipper Experienced

Wet Kipper

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I've just won one with the #Santa's Locker competition

https://twitter.com/wet_kipper/status/809391656097161216

 

looking forward to what it can do for someone who has nothing connected to the net in their house, and doesn't subscribe to prime, Spotify or any other type service

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Gyp Experienced

Gyp

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I've just won one with the #Santa's Locker competition

https://twitter.com/wet_kipper/status/809391656097161216

 

looking forward to what it can do for someone who has nothing connected to the net in their house, and doesn't subscribe to prime, Spotify or any other type service

 

:-)

 

If you decide that the answer is "not enough", let me know as the missus wanted one for the kitchen

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Aspman Veteran

Aspman

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Now on offer; £20 off if you want one.

 

Apparently my son likes to set Alexa maths questions on my Dad's one.

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JohnMcL7 Proficient

JohnMcL7

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I received an Echo Dot as a gift, so far I love the novelty of it and currently tempted to go a bit further with it and order smart bulbs and power for a room to try it out.  It seems a complete waste of money but the idea of being able to voice activate some of that stuff seems very cool.  If my Dad was at all open to technology I think it would be perfect for him, he's terrible using computers or tablets as his control isn't good nor is his vision and Alexa is quite smart in that it doesn't need a super specific command to work - you can ask it what's happening today, what's the news etc. and it will give you the news each time.

 

I do have a lot of music in Amazon which makes the Echo useful although it's pretty rubbish at playing individual albums or tracks - when I asked it to play Westworld, it replied it couldn't find the Artist Westworld instead I had to ask it to play Westworld music from season one or something.  I asked it to play Time from Inception which I do own but it found some other version I didn't own (Mine is the original inception version) and instead offered me the chance to buy it, it couldn't find Dredd either as it was looking for Dread.  On the other hand it's great at playing general music, telling it to play some Star Wars meant it hopped through my star wars albums and asking it to play some classical music gave me some good piano music.  I'm tempted by the £4 offer for Amazon unlimited which is tied to the Echo although annoyingly it's tied to a specific Echo and not just your Echos in general, I mostly listen to music on an mp3 player which is offline so I need to buy albums for it but like the idea of using amazon unlimited to find  new music.

 

There's a lot of handy little questions you can ask it, what the weather is, currency conversion, the meaning of life, set a timer, set an alarm, set a sleep timer, execute order 66 etc. although time will tell if it's any actual use or not.  This is a useful summary of the Alexa skills:

 

https://www.buzzfeed.com/echouk/tips-and-tricks-for-getting-the-most-out-of-your-amazon-e?b=1&utm_term=.xaV5GQjaw#.qlD8Pxoe6

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Aspman Veteran

Aspman

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I'm going to buy a megaphone and drive round an affluent area shouting "Alexa buy me ten massive dildos"

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@Lee Grand Master

@Lee

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I'm going to buy a megaphone and drive round an affluent area shouting "Alexa buy me ten massive dildos"

pretty sure plenty of chavs will also buy them so they don't have to reach to the end of the sofa for their iPhone 6S to order a pizza :notme:

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Aspman Veteran

Aspman

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pretty sure plenty of chavs will also buy them so they don't have to reach to the end of the sofa for their iPhone 6S to order a pizza :notme:

 

That wouldn't be so funny, they'd just think they were getting free dildos.

 

I'd have to shout 'Buy me Soap' instead.

Edited by Aspman
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WaveyDavey Experienced

WaveyDavey

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These were back on sale at a reduced price for Prime members on Prime day last week. £79 delivered.

 

We got one and it seems ok..... Obviously we have prime so the things mentioned previously about it being tied to Amazon etc.... aren't an issue for us. It's main use will be as a Bluetooth speaker / Internet Radio / streaming service in the kitchen & conservatory (We have Apple music and the mrs has decided to sign up for the Amazon Unlimited music service on it also for £3.99 a month.... So £13.98 a month including our Apple Music subscription for both the unlimited services), And it's also been used to read out commute traffic issues and train departures so far too.

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2SkodaFamily Experienced

2SkodaFamily

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Posted

We bought one the other week. It has replaced the DAB radio and the bluetooth speaker in the kitchen and it's better at both jobs than the things it replaces. I could never be bothered to see how to tune the radio, and the BT Speaker was just rubbish. I've also gone for the £20/yr option of uploading all my music to Amazon music as well as the £4/month Unlimited.

 

May well get into home automation as I'm a gadget geek, although I've not spent much time thinking it through. Surely you'd need to have one in every room, or I've got to go into the kitchen to tell it to turn on the lamp in the lounge?

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WaveyDavey Experienced

WaveyDavey

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1 hour ago, 2SkodaFamily said:

We bought one the other week. It has replaced the DAB radio and the bluetooth speaker in the kitchen and it's better at both jobs than the things it replaces. I could never be bothered to see how to tune the radio, and the BT Speaker was just rubbish. I've also gone for the £20/yr option of uploading all my music to Amazon music as well as the £4/month Unlimited.

 

May well get into home automation as I'm a gadget geek, although I've not spent much time thinking it through. Surely you'd need to have one in every room, or I've got to go into the kitchen to tell it to turn on the lamp in the lounge?

 

 

Amazon Dot for the other rooms. ;)

 

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2SkodaFamily Experienced

2SkodaFamily

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2 hours ago, WaveyDavey said:

 

 

Amazon Dot for the other rooms. ;)

 

Darn it, you had to go and say that didn't you? Now I seem to have ordered a Dot and a couple of smart switches. Now idea how that happened......

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